If survival is the test of worth, Barras was the most able, serving first Louis XVI, then Robespierre, and helping both of them to their deaths; maneuvering safely through crisis after crisis, through mistress after mistress, gathering wealth and power at every turn, giving Napoleon an army and a wife, outliving them, and dying in easy circumstances in re-Bourbonized Paris at the age of seventy-four (1829);1 he had nine lives and sold them all.
